Blu-ray Review: LEGO Justice League – Attack of the Legion of Doom

By Chaz Lipp

Hot on the heels of the decidedly more mature, PG-13-rated Justice League: Gods and Monsters, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and DC Animation have unleashed LEGO Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom!. This one is thoroughly kid friendly and mired in goofy silliness typical of previous LEGO animated features. While fun for awhile, Legion of Doom may try the patience of older viewers. Still, at 75 minutes it passes pretty painlessly.

The problem with this is, during its most action-heavy sequences, it feels a little too much like a cool LEGO video game that we’re watching someone demo but never get to play. Why watch animated LEGO characters leaping around smashing stuff when you can do it yourself via a comic book-based game? Presumably for well-paced storytelling and inventive voice acting, and we do get a bit of the latter in Legion of Doom, at the very least. In fact, frequent DC Animation voice actor Mark Hamill is a particular treat as Trickster, a role very familiar to the Star Wars actor. In fact, he even tackled the character in live-action form in the short-lived series The Flash (1990-91). Hamill also voices Sinestro.

Much of Legion of Doom feels tired and old hat. Superman (Nolan North), Batman (Troy Baker), and Wonder Woman (Grey Griffin) must band together to combat Lex Luthor (John DiMaggio) and his gang of supervillains, collectively known as the Legion of Doom. Plenty of punning humor ensues and it will play quite well to a younger audience. It just all feels a bit uninspired and superfluous. An interesting side note, the other very recent Warner/DC Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem (a sequel to this year’s Animal Instinct) has been criticized in some circles as nothing more than a toy line cash in (Mattel has a toy series under the Batman Unlimited brand). Some of those same critics give these LEGO movies a pass. What gives? Isn’t the goal of this release ultimately to help boost LEGO sales and continue elevating the brand’s profile?

Terrific audio/visual presentation should please even discerning DC Animation fans, with a razor sharp 1080p image and appropriately punchy DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix. The Blu-ray package (which also includes a standard DVD and Digital HD copy) falls a bit short in terms of bonus features. There’s one feature, “Click, Zap, Boom! Creating the Sound Design,” an 18-minute featurette with a fairly self-explanatory title. It’s nice that something new was included though I don’t know how much repeat viewing it’s likely to inspire among most viewers.